Touristocracy: organized vulnerability

Abstract

[eng] The stand-by that the COVID-19 pandemic has meant in 2020 recalls the image of the state of nature. This hypothetical devise allowed classical thinkers to represent a kind of original stage in history, a suspension of the “normality” of institutions, in which we could see more clearly under which prerequisites one would be willing to subject himself or herself to the social contract, and in which not. Focusing on the Ancien Régime, then no one would submit to the arbitrary power of a despotic regime -they believed- but only to the law agreed by free and equal subjects, more or less what we would call nowadays a democracy. It is not by chance that the pandemic has been seen as a “total social fact”, “inaugural experience”, moment for a “new social contract”, a “reconstruction deal”.